Nokia Drive & Nokia 822

[MadDogFL62]

Pretty cool that Nokia has decided to release their Drive APP to all Windows 8 users. That's just like HTC... no wait. That's just like Samsung... no wait. Anyway, I know that there is no such thing as "free", but Nokia has made a pretty nice gesture here regardless of what may be "in it for them".

So I have had Drive on my phone since day 1. Never really looked at it. Earlier this morning, I gave it a launch and a test trip. My house to Sebring International Raceway. I live in Tampa - about a 2 hour trip. There is a "logical" route and a route that may be a bit shorter, but it uses some crappy roads. Sure enough, Drive took me the shorter distance down the crappy roads. I was kind of bummed about that. Then, I was even more bummed to see that there was really no way to modify the route besides selecting 1 of 3 route "types": economical route, shorter route or fastest route. I was kinda hoping to drag and drop the route highlighted on the map. No such luck. Ugh.

Did some research and found out that Nokia Drive will use a Bing Map, add it as a route and navigate you there. So I went to Bing on my laptop. Set my trip from home to Sebring, and viola, the same route came up as I got on Nokia Drive! However, this time I was able to take my mouse and modify the route. I made the modifications the selected SHARE on the top left toolbar. I emailed myself the directions, opened them on my phone, and from there - Nokia Drive took over, took the directions, set the route, gave me an arrival time and asked me if I was ready to go! Yea man, pretty cool.

I know, I know, you can Bing the trip on the phone, blah, blah, blah. I guess I am getting old. It's easier to see, create and edit a map on a 23'' screen and send it to something smaller. Just thought I would share my 822 experiment for the day.

 

[willied]

It's definitely pretty cool to have, even if it doesn't always work perfectly. I haven't used mine enough to give a real verdict on it, but I definitely like having it in case I'm without my Garmin. It should definitely get better as time passes and they get the major kinks worked out.

And thanks for the tip on the ability to send a custom route to it from Bing Maps. I did not know that. Should come in handy someday.

 

[MadDogFL62]

It's definitely pretty cool to have, even if it doesn't always work perfectly. I haven't used mine enough to give a real verdict on it, but I definitely like having it in case I'm without my Garmin. It should definitely get better as time passes and they get the major kinks worked out.

And thanks for the tip on the ability to send a custom route to it from Bing Maps. I did not know that. Should come in handy someday.

Consider it an early 50th birthday present from me. Being able to view and adjust a map before putting it into route really helps these older eyes!

 

[John D II]

Thanks for that tip! I too was looking for a way to edit the routes to my preferred roads on longer trips. I use maps a LOT. My biggest gripe was the fact that it wouldn't give up trying to send me down roads for at least an hour every time I disobeyed the directions on the phone. An hour worth of "turn around" directions is more than I can tolerate. Google maps would discover the next best route after ignoring a few U turn commands, but the Nokia drive is insistent that you use its directions.

 

[hopmedic]

That's a GREAT tip. Stick it over on the WP8 forum so that others on WP can see it, too.

Also, I've used Nokia Drive and haven't had any problems (yet), but I know others have... But since you have an idea for improvement, consider communicating it to Nokia. Remember - Drive is still BETA software - and since it hasn't been finalized, there's a better chance that they'll implement it.